Thursday, February 28, 2013

New Years Eve

December 31 2012. New York City. Roughly 9:30am. Was totally outside the window of the Today Show for a few seconds. I’ve now been on American telly. Who wants to touch me?

The reason I was hanging around the NBC building was because I was on my way to a 10am tour of their studios, mainly just to see if 30 Rock looks like how it does on 30 Rock. And yes, yes it does.

Two NBC Pages take you on the tour. One was José, a cute nerdy guy with dark hair and glasses and who I instantly decided I wanted to run away with, and in a demonstration of just how shallow I am, I honest to god don’t have the slightest idea what the other guy’s name was. He had curly hair. We shall call him Curly.

José and Curly took us through a few different studios, talking about the glory days and what filth they’re used for now (I’m paraphrasing. No offence, Dr Oz). It was interesting, but I didn’t get excited until we got to the studio they’ve used for the last 38 years to film Saturday Night Live. José pointed out the stage they use for the ‘more intricate’ sets, for example, ‘that’s where they filmed the Wayne’s World sketches.’ Good thing the seats in that studio are yellow, because a little bit of wee came out. Then he told us that there’s a lottery to get tickets to a SNL recording, and that for a CHANCE at getting standby tickets you have to sleep on the street for two nights prior, ‘so next time you’re in New York we can all do that together.’ So… I went to New York and an attractive man who works in television invited me to sleep with him. That’s how I’m telling it from now on.

After the tour my plan was to get back on the sightseeing bus and head to the American Museum of Natural History (I only wanted to go because it’s the one in the first Night at the Museum and I really like movies with monkeys in them. Also considered going to the Guggenheim just so I had an excuse to say Guggenheim. Goo-gen-highmmm). But, alas, it was New Years Eve in New York and all the roads were about to be closed off. There were only going to be two more buses and that’s not enough time to do some museum laps. It was my last chance to use the bus, so I decided to freeze my ass off one last time and do the entire two hour tour. And I’m glad I did, because for the second time that day, I fell in love.

Her name was Denise. She was an enthusiastic tour guide from Harlem with dreadlocks down to her hiney and a passion for starting open-top bus sing-a-longs. Even when you’ve lost all feeling in your face, you can still muster the energy to belt out New York, New York.

Anyway, when I got off the bus you couldn’t get anywhere near Times Square, so I went to a park and bought some donuts. They were amazing. One was coffee flavoured, and I couldn’t get over how weird it was that the Americans can make a donut taste like coffee, but can’t make a cup of coffee taste like coffee.

Then I went back to my hotel, put my pjs on, turned the heat waaaay up and watched the ball drop on TV.